


All The Ways We Change

by Nyresnuger



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Getting Together, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, M/M, Medical Trauma, SEP era, Sickfic, is that a thing??, mutual hurt/comfor, non traditional confession, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23262559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyresnuger/pseuds/Nyresnuger
Summary: It's not without risk, becoming a super soldier. You need someone there to catch you when you fall
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	All The Ways We Change

**Author's Note:**

> Something soft and emotional
> 
> Please come bother me on my tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nyresnuger

The first thing Jack becomes aware of is the light. Everything around him is white, sterile and pristine enough to almost seem blue. The next thing is a rush of physical sensations; the rough blankets against his skin, a slight headache residing near the back of his skull, a swollen dryness of his throat.

And at last, the dull, heavy relief that he woke up at all.

His memories are blurry, he suspects they might be out of order too. He can recall the by now familiar rush of something powerful in his veins after a new SEP injection, the promise of change, both heady and deeply eerie.

He remembers a sharp, burning pain in his chest. The feeling of vertigo, the image of one of the long, pristinely lit hallways on base. He thinks he might have cried? At least a dread so sharp and paralyzing he can barely breathe is seeping through every unfocused recollection.

The world shifts more clearly into focus. He winzes and pushes himself up on one elbow, breathes through the initial dizziness and looks around.

He’s in the infirmary connected to the SEP base hospital. It’s relatively empty. A few beds from his, a person is sleeping and further down two men are chatting quietly with a somewhat groggy looking woman with a bandage around her arm. The light streaming in through high windows indicate it might be about noon.

He tries to collect his thoughts. Ends up freeing one hand from the blankets and counts it out on his fingers. He’s slept for a minimum of 16 hours unless he’s misjudging the light. A new wave of disbelief and bone-deep relief washes over him. The cocktail is potent enough to almost make him nauseous.

Most people who react badly to the injections are written off as done for only five hours after they pass out.

Slowly, he lowers himself down on the firm mattress. He closes his eyes and gently rolls onto his other side.

When he opens his eyes again, he spots him.

He’s slumped in the small chair next to the bed Jack is laying in. His arms might have been crossed when he fell asleep, but sleep has softened the position till he looks almost like he’s hugging his own midsection. His head is tilted back slightly, resting awkwardly on the back of the chair. 

“Hi Gabe,” he croaks, surprised by how weak and sore his voice sounds.

Gabriel hears him though, stirring with a murmur of what might be Spanish too quick for Jack to catch and what might not be words at all.

There’s a look of both surprise and immense tenderness on Gabriel’s face for a second before he wills it into more neutral folds. When he grabs Jacks hand in both of his, however, there’s an unfamiliar urgency and intimacy there.

“Hey there Jackie,” he smiles while his thumb brush over the meaty part of Jacks palm, slightly frantic in its movements, “you doing okay?”

He tries responding but gets caught in a coughing fit. When it subsides, he manages a weak:

“Yeah, I think so.”

The disbelief and concern mixes in Gabriel’s face, carves little lines by his eyes and twists his mouth slightly. When they first met, Jack’s pretty sure he would have mistaken it for anger. Most things about Gabriel seem like anger to the untrained eye.

“I’m serious, I’m alright.” He places his other hand over Gabriel’s, shoots him a small smile – with pretty much anyone else, he’d opt for the blindingly charming poster-boy smile, but Gabe has a weird knack for looking right through it. He reads him like a book, and Jacks pretty sure he’d get bodily hauled closer to a doctor if Gabriel even suspected he might not be okay.

Gabriel studies his face, the suspicion melts away, but the worry stays. Jack pads him slightly on the hand, runs a finger along the prominent veins to steady both of them. Gabriel’s eye trails down to their hands; intertwined and alive. Together.

“How long did I sleep?”

Gabriel hums low and rumbly as the only response, then look up at him slowly, brows furrowing slightly.

“What time is it?” he manages, then remember he’s the one not hospitalized and fishes a mobile phone out of his own pocket to check. Jack awaits the answer, unsure what to feel or expect.

“Jack Morrison, you have slept for about 16 and a half hours.”

He nods slowly to himself, releases the last bit of tension building in his body. Then looks up at Gabriel, meets his eyes:

“And why are you here?”

He’s genuinely curious but tries to pepper in a little bit of a flirtatious edge to the question. He’s sure there’s a perfectly rational answer – there’s not a lot of medical personnel available at all times, so getting one of the trainees to watch over him would be perfectly reasonable – but he wont pass by a chance to get a rise out of Gabriel.

Instead, there’s the hint of a little sarcastic smile on Gabe’s lips, accompanied by a short huff of air through his nose like he’s surprised by the question. Jack chooses to interpret it as him not having a clever answer and is ready to write it off as a win.

But something is off.

Gabriel is holding his gaze with a knowing, slightly confused, little grin glinting in his eyes, like there’s a shared understanding between them.

Something in Jack’s face must tip him off, for his expression falters.

“You don’t remember, do you?”

A new cold dread rolls over him, his mind frantically skipping through the events as he can recall them; he got his latest batch of enhancing injections, reacted badly a while later, stumbled through the halls then … then- then woke up here, 16 hours later.

He shakes his head.

To his immense surprise Gabriel’s expression surges through worried concern in a split second, then transforms into a coy little smile.

“What now?” Jack tries to fix him with a level stare, but it’s another one of his tricks Gabe has always been immune too. Instead he just looks back, lingering concern for his wellbeing swirling in his dark eyes and some damn secret hiding where his lips curl subtly upwards. Jack kind of wants to punch him.

Instead, he’s interrupted when Gabe frees one of his hands from Jacks and lifts it to cup his cheek.

“You were real sweet is all,” he murmurs, low and raspy, “and I was worried about you.”

Gabriel’s always been hard to read. And Jack’s always been unsure if it was by choice or just how he is. It’s like there’s almost too much going on on his face; layers of secrets and biting sarcasm and genuine emotion mixing and cancelling each other out.

Like now, when worry and smugness and something so soft and tender Jack wants to drop his gaze and remind him, they can’t do this is public – it all mixes in his sharp features. Jacks heart is beating, his cheek must be burning against Gabe’s soft palm.

“You came down to my room, looking like you thought you were going to drop dead. Damn near woke the whole quarter,” he gives a dry chuckle and traces Jacks cheekbone with a callous thumb, “managed to get you alone before you started telling me to hold you. So, I took you here, then felt bad about leaving.”

He shrugs, like it’s nothing.

Jack is mortified.

They’ve danced around this for months. The soft little touches, grounding and gentle amidst all the chaos and destruction. They’ve both been acutely aware it veered off platonic territory a long time ago, but they’ve never talked about it.

Not outside that one time Gabe got horrifically drunk, then doted on him for an entire evening while Jack narrowly avoided their fellow trainees and any accusations of fraternization. The memory still makes the tips of his ears glow red and he dares not bring it up with Gabriel unless he can cleverly drop hints about it in a public situation where he can’t answer back directly.

This is something new. This is Jack at his most vulnerable seeking Gabe intentionally out – over superiors and medical personnel. Over any sort of rational decision Jack sought out Gabe.

“I’m-“ he begins, but Gabriel removes the hand from his jaw and holds it up to silence him.

“It’s alright blondie, we all get a little scared,” there’s an uncomfortable pull by his mouth, just for a second.

“Yeah, but-“ he tries again, but Gabriel fixes him with one look.

“Stop Jack, it’s alright,” his shoulders slump, and for the first time Jack becomes keenly aware how tired he looks, how he’s still dressed in the grey shirt Jack knows he sleeps in. He hunches over the bed, rests on his forearms besides Jack.

“You just scared me a little is all,” he murmurs.

Jack aches.

He wants to reach out and touch him, somehow assure him things will turn out alright. Instead his hands interlock in his lab, unsure. The terrifying thought that he might one day be in Gabriel’s place dawns on him.

Inky despair swirls in his chest by the thought alone. They’ve been in the SEP for almost a year by now. The harsh reality that people die in this has been there all along, an oppressive, unpredictable shadow looming every time a new scientist with bright and calculating eyes line them up and changes them in ways no one could predict or foresee.

He’s never for a second let himself consider it might one day be Gabe who’s not there, smiling ruefully and lopsided, at the breakfast table.

He bet Gabe has, sitting there in the dark infirmary for 16 long hours besides a man who’s just all but confessed to you.

“Stop looking like that, you’re okay.” Gabe pulls him back to reality. He still looks somewhat deflated, a little less put together than usually. He’s gotten his face and voice in order, every bit the pragmatist.

The only thing betraying his emotional vulnerability is his right hand, tightening in the sheet next to Jacks bicep. A fleeting press of skin on skin contact.

“Gabe, I’m so sorry,” this time he gets it out before Gabriel cuts him off. He knows the other is longing to interrupt him with a halfhearted reassurance it’s okay, so he holds up a hand to silence him.

“I shouldn’t have come to you, that was,” he studies his face, searches for the right word, “unprofessional,” he closes. He rushes to further explain when he sees the furrow take shape on Gabriel’s brow.

This time however, Gabe doesn’t let him. Instead he closes a strong hand around Jacks wrist, draws both their hands closer to his own chest, intertwines their fingers.

“Shut up Jack,” the tone is dark, but there’s no real heat there, “I’m glad you came so I could,” the smallest of pauses, barely there, “get you somewhere safe.”

Jack swallows thickly. Gabe is looking directly at him. It’s nearly unbearable in its raw intimacy. It’s not lost on him how his hand rests right over Gabe’s heart, though he’d probably get punched if he pointed it out now. Gabe is looking at him like Jack suspects he looks at dead men moments before he pulls the trigger, sharp and focused, like his whole world is reduced to the two of them.

It’s terrifying and intoxicating and most importantly; it’s honest.

So Jack aches.  
Because he hears the subtext loud and clear. _Rather you’d died with me than alone._

He swallows again.

“Okay,” he croaks out and thinks (hopes? Fears?) this weird spell might break if he speaks, but it doesn’t. The overwhelming openness stays between them as Gabe hums low in response.

Jack extracts his hand from Gabe’s and presses it firm over the left side of his chest, feel his heart beat slow and immense.

Gabriel looks like he just proposed. Soft and open and utterly awestruck. The gravity of the situation weighs heavy on Jack, he can feel the entire projection of his life shift slightly, become intertwined with the man in front of him. The moments feel monumental and eternal. He wants to commit them to memory, how the light dances high on Gabriel’s cheekbones and bring out the subtle green in his eyes. How he’s undeniably alive beneath his palm.

He’s starring down the rest of his life and this is where he decides the shape of it – groggy from sleep and slightly nauseous and yet utterly sure this is the only way he can fight on.

“Gabriel Reyes, if you ever die on me, I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

That earns him a playful punch in the shoulder and the words ‘wouldn’t expect less’ mumbled into his fingers when Gabriel brings them to his face and places a kiss in the palm.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!
> 
> These two will be the end of me! Please do come yell at me about them on my tumblr, I make it very clear how in love i am with one Gabriel Reyes on there: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nyresnuger


End file.
